Neurodegeneration/Neurological disorders

Dr. Arnsten is an international expert on the molecular regulation of higher cortical circuits, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She received her B.A. in Neuroscience from Brown University in 1976 (where she created the Neuroscience major), and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCSD in 1981. She did post-doctoral research with Dr. Susan Iversen at Cambridge University in the UK, and with Dr. Patricia Goldman-Rakic at Yale. Dr. Arnsten's research examines the neural basis of higher cognition. Her work has revealed that the newly evolved cortical circuits that underlie higher cognition are uniquely regulated at the molecular level, conferring vulnerability in mental illness and age-related cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease. Arnsten's research has led to new treatments for cognitive disorders in humans, including the successful translation of guanfacine (IntunivTM) for the treatment of ADHD and related prefrontal cortical disorders.

The Bhattacharyya Lab studies molecular mechanism of kinase signaling, especially in the context of learning, memory and neuropathological conditions. Dr. Bhattacharyya received her PhD in Computational Biophysics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore where she used molecular dynamics simulations and graph theory to study allosteric communication in proteins and its complexes with RNA/DNA. She made a transition into experimental biology during her postdoctoral studies at the University of California Berkeley as a Human Frontier Science Program Long Term Fellow. She used structural biology, single-molecule microscopy, and native mass spectrometry along with computational techniques to study the molecular mechanism of regulation in a calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase that is critical for learning and memory. The Bhattacharyya Lab takes an integrative approach to understand the molecular mechanism of cellular signaling using both experimental and computational techniques.

Thomas Biederer received his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. Thomas Biederer then pursued postdoctoral training with Dr. Thomas Südhof at the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas to investigate mechanisms of synapse formation. He started his research group in 2003 as faculty member at Yale University, was 2013-2019 at Tufts University, and joined the Yale faculty again in 2019. Dr. Biederer’s multidisciplinary research is motivated by his deep-seated interest in the biology of synapses, the cellular structures that connect neurons into networks. His long-term goals are to define how synapses develop, understand their roles in cognition, and investigate the profound disease relevance of synaptic aberrations. Progress from his group is providing insights into trans-synaptic complexes and how they dynamically organize synapse formation and maturation in vitro and in vivo. Attaining these goals is of importance to human health as altered synapse formation and stability underlie devastating brain disorders, including those that are neurodevelopmental diseases and related to drugs of abuse.

Dr. Blumenfeld's clinical and research work focuses on epilepsy, cognition and brain imaging. He directs Yale's Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center (CNIC), a new multi-disciplinary core facility for innovative study and treatment of brain disorders. Teaching activities include a textbook titled Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases, Sinauer Assoc., Publ. 2002, 2010, 2020.

Dr. Angélique Bordey holds the rank of Professor of Neurosurgery, and Cellular & Molecular Physiology. Dr. Bordey is an active participant in teaching and training of graduate and medical students at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Bordey is an  Editor for several journals and on the advisory board of CURE epilepsy and the TSC Alliance preclinical consortium. She has served as a permanent member on several grant review committees and NIH study sections. Finally, she is a McKnight awardee and holds several federal and foundation grants as well as patents for the treatment of epilepsy.

Kristen Brennand, PhD is the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Genetics at Yale University School of Medicine. She first established her independent laboratory in the Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2012, after having completed post-doctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and PhD studies at Harvard University. Dr. Brennand’s research combines expertise in genomic engineering, neuroscience, and stem cells, to identify the mechanisms that underlie brain disease. Her focus lies in resolving the convergence of, and complex interplay between, the many risk variants linked to disease, towards the goal of facilitating the clinical translation of genetic findings.  Dr. Brennand’s work is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the Brain Research Foundation, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Sreeganga S. Chandra received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Purdue University. In her postdoctoral research, she pursued her interest in neuronal cell biology and neurodegeneration in the lab of Thomas C. Südhof at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience.

Rui Chang received his B.S. in Biological Sciences and Biotechnology from Tsinghua University, China in 2005. He then studied sensory transduction with Emily Liman and earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California in 2011. He completed his postdoctoral training with Stephen Liberles at Harvard Medical School, where he investigated how body sensory cues are monitored by the brain through the vagus nerve, and how these internal signals regulate whole body physiology. He joined both the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine in January 2018.The Chang lab uses state-of-the-art molecular, genetic, and imaging approaches including single-cell gene expression profiling, virus-based anatomical mapping, in vivo imaging, optogenetics, and chemogenetics to reveal the physiological functions of diverse organ-to-brain circuits. The goal is to better understand the important body-brain interface, and to develop novel neuronal-based therapeutic strategies for disease intervention.

Daniel Colón-Ramos was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He completed his B.A. at Harvard University, his PhD in the lab of Dr. Sally Kornbluth at Duke University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Kang Shen at Stanford University. The Colón-Ramos lab is interested in how synapses are precisely assembled to build the neuronal architecture that underlies behavior. To address this, they developed tools in the thermotaxis circuit of C. elegans. Their system enables unbiased genetic screens to identify novel pathways that instruct synaptogenesis in vivo, and single-cell manipulation of these pathways to understand how they influence behavior. As mechanisms underlying synapse structure and function are conserved, the research program seeks to enhance our understanding of synaptic cell biology in higher organisms, which may be important for disease.

Dr. Cosgrove uses neuroreceptor imaging techniques such as PET to gain insights into the brains of people with substance use and other stress-related disorders. Trained as a clinical psychologist who worked with individuals managing alcohol and drug use disorders, Dr. Cosgrove transitioned to conducting research in order to inform the treatment of substance use disorders. Her laboratory develops and applies innovative brain imaging paradigms to track changes in critical neurochemicals over time, to identify treatment targets for psychiatric disorders, and to examine individual and sex and gender differences.

A native of Italy, De Camilli studied at the Liceo Manzoni in Milan, earned his M.D. degree from the University of Milano in 1972 and obtained a postgraduate degree in medical endocrinology from the University of Pavia in Italy. He was a postdoctoral fellow (1978-79) with Paul Greengard in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale, and subsequently an assistant professor in the Yale Section of Cell Biology. Following a return of a few years to Milan, he moved back to Yale in the late 1980s, where he is now John Klingenstein Professor of Neuroscience. He became an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1992. From 1997 to 2000 he served as Chair of the Department of Cell Biology and since 2005 he is Founding Director of the Yale Program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair (CNNR). He also served as Chair of the Department of Neuroscience from 2015 to 2021, and as Director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience from 2015 to 2022.The De Camilli lab is interested in the cell biology of neuronal synapses. His studies on synaptic vesicle dynamics have contributed to the general fields of exocytosis and endocytosis. His research has provided insight into mechanisms of membrane fission and has revealed ways through which membrane-associated proteins can generate, sense and stabilize lipid bilayer curvature. His discovery and characterization of the role of phosphoinositide metabolism in the control of endocytosis have broad implications in the fields of phospholipid signaling and of membrane traffic. Building on this work, he has recently become interested in the role of membrane contact sites in the control of the homeostasis of bilayer lipids. His studies of synapses have also contributed to the elucidation of pathogenetic mechanisms of human diseases, with recent emphasis on Parkinson's disease.

Jonathan Demb is a Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Science with secondary appointments in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Physiology and the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Demb obtained his doctoral degree from Stanford University and did postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. Demb was a faculty member at the University of Michigan before moving to Yale in 2011. The Demb lab investigates the cellular and synaptic mechanisms that enable visual processing by the mammalian retina. Major accomplishments include identifying fundamental nonlinearities at retinal synapses that mediate specialized spatial processing by retinal ganglion cells; elucidating the role of disinhibition in visual contrast processing; characterizing asymmetries between the retina's ON and OFF pathways; determining roles of NMDA-type glutamate receptors in ganglion cell receptive fields; identifying characteristic properties of cone-mediated vision in the mouse retina; developing the use of a glutamate sensor (iGluSnFR) for study of retinal circuitry; identifying novel amacrine cell circuits using optogenetic technology; and testing experimental therapies in mouse models of retinal disease. Demb is a Reviewing Editor at the Journal of Neuroscience and is on the Editorial Board of PLoS Biology. He was awarded the Cogan Award in 2013 from the Associate for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) to recognize his contributions to the field of retinal neuroscience.

Irina Esterlis is a clinical neuropsychologist and neuroreceptor imager with extensive training in the application of SPECT and PET to the study of mood, trauma, suicide, and comorbid disorders. Dr. Esterlis has developed two novel paradigms to interrogate both the acetylcholine and glutamatergic systems in vivo in human. Her lab was also the first to show ketamine-induced changes in human volunteers in vivo. She has received awards from Society of Nuclear Medicine, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Society for Biological Psychiatry, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Esterlis' current work includes the study of the metabotropic glutamatergic receptor involvement in bipolar depression and suicide, and synaptic alterations associated with depression, aging, and suicidality. The lab has expanded to add in vivo preclinical work to elucidate human findings.

Emilia Favuzzi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Wu Tsai Institute at Yale University. She grew up in Italy and received a B.S. in Biology and a M.S. in Neurobiology from Sapienza University of Rome. She did her doctoral training at the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante (Spain) and the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King’s College London. Her graduate research focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of inhibitory circuit development and plasticity in the cerebral cortex. In her postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute, she focused on microglia-inhibitory synapse interactions during development and discovered that specialized microglia differentially engage with specific synapse types. Her past work opened a new avenue in understanding neuroimmune crosstalk by showing that neuroimmune interactions within the brain may be as specific as those between neurons. This novel conceptual framework is the foundation of the Favuzzi lab focused on the immune and glial mechanisms underlying brain wiring and function, with an emphasis on (1) interactions among neuronal and non-neuronal cells and (2) brain-body communication. Over the years, Emilia was awarded numerous prizes such as the Beddington Medal from the British Society for Developmental Biology, the Krieg Cortical Kudos Scholar Award from the Cajal Club, the Next Generation Leader by the Allen Institute, and the Gruber International Research Award.

Dr. Fredericks’ research focuses on preclinical Alzheimer’s disease and on less common Alzheimer’s variants, using advanced imaging tools to better understand how Alzheimer’s disease progresses through functional networks in the brain. She is a member of Yale’s Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center (CNIC), a multidisciplinary group applying innovative imaging methods to the study of brain disease. Clinically, Dr. Fredericks sees patients with a variety of cognitive and behavioral concerns. She specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders.

Sourav Ghosh, Ph.D. obtained a M.Sc. in Zoology at the University of Calcutta, where he studied Drosophila and mosquito genetics. Next, he completed his graduate studies on cell cytoskeleton and protein trafficking under the direction of John V. Cox at the University of Tennessee, Memphis. Subsequently, Dr. Ghosh did his postdoctoral research on cell signaling at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies under the guidance of Tony Hunter. In 2007, Dr. Ghosh joined University of Arizona as an Assistant Professor, and in 2014 he moved to Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Carla Rothlin co-direct a lab studying the regulation of inflammation (Rothin, Ghosh et al. Cell, 2007, Carrera Silva et al. Immunity, 2013, Bosurgi et al. Science, 2017). While inflammation is a cardinal feature for immune defense, the magnitude and period of the inflammatory response has to follow the ‘Goldilocks Principle’ wherein inflammation would be detrimental if its amplitude is too little or too much, or its period too short or too long. Drs. Rothlin and Ghosh investigates the principles and molecular mechanisms that negatively regulate inflammation and ensure that the amplitude and period of inflammation is ‘just right’. Defects in these molecular circuits can manifest as wide ranging clinical problems including chronic or pathological inflammation, autoimmunity and pathological wound healing, while harnessing these checkpoints can improve anti-cancer immunity.

Pallavi Gopal is a graduate of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Her Ph.D. thesis work in Neuroscience with Dr. Jeffrey Golden focused on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms that guide neuronal migration during forebrain development. After earning her M.D., Pallavi completed postgraduate clinical training in Anatomic Pathology and Neuropathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She did her postdoctoral research training with Dr. Erika Holzbaur at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gopal is a recipient of the NINDS Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award. She joined the Pathology Department at Yale School of Medicine in January 2018.

Dr. Grutzendler obtained his MD from Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, where he was born and raised. He completed a medical internship in Internal Medicine and a residency in Neurology at Washington University/Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Following that, he pursued a combined clinical and research fellowship in the Alzheimer Disease Research Center and the Department of Neurobiology at Washington University, with additional neurobiology research training at the Skirball Institute of New York University. Dr. Grutzendler's laboratory is dedicated to understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of normal brain function and neuropathology. They have a particular focus on elucidating mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration, such as those found in Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, they aim to advance the understanding of cell-cell interactions through the utilization of intravital optical imaging techniques, enabling them to study the brain in real-time and observe dynamic processes at the cellular and molecular levels. Moreover, their laboratory is interested in developing therapeutics for brain disorders. Leveraging their expertise in brain imaging, they work with chemists to develop novel small molecules to target specific brain cell types for drug delivery and as imaging probes. In addition to the research endeavors, Dr. Grutzendler is actively involved in clinical activities focused on dementia and Alzheimer's patients. He works closely with individuals affected by these neurodegenerative disorders, providing comprehensive care and support.